Overdue author correspondence procedure

The goal of the PubMed process is to take articles through all the stages of the process as quickly as possible. Therefore, any delays at one step or another cause overall delay in availability of the article for archiving.

It is important for team members to adhere to the procedures outlined below and follow them to the point.

It is important task of a manager to monitor and resolve situations when article is “stuck” at certain point.

Roles

Team member - person who reviews articles
Manager - Christopher Fick
Next Level Manager - Zoya

Deadlines

Team member - max 3 reminders every 4’th day and contact manager 4 days after 3’d reminder Manager:
- 2 times a week check authors which are overdue more than 20 days
- check for replies from “on-hold” authors once a month (preferably last day of the month)

Instructions for team members

Occasionally team members need to request author’s input to proceed with the review. Usually authors reply on such enquiries within 2-3 days. However, in situations when this is not the case, team member needs to follow the procedure below to remind authors about his/her enquiry.

  1. Send 1’st reminder to corresponding author after 4 days, since initial request email.
  2. Send 2’nd reminder to corresponding author after 4 days, since 1’s reminder
  3. Contact your manager to get email addresses of all authors of the article and send 3’d (last) reminder to all authors after 4 days, since 2’nd reminder.
  1. If you do not get a reply after 4 days, contact your manager and agree that you put this article on hold. Once agreed, your manager should put the paper on-hold. From that point manager is responsible for follow up of the article.
  2. If manager gets a reply from author (for “on-hold article”), manager needs to relay author’s reply to team member. Team member needs to resume review of the article. From that point team member is responsible for communication with author. If further follow up is required, then it should be done in accordance with this procedure (i.e. new 1’st, 2’nd and 3’d reminders, if required).

Instructions for manager

  1. Go to “Overdue Author Correspondence Dashboard”.
  2. Check “Days since Assignment Date” column for the articles which exceed 20 days.
  3. Go through each of the overdue articles with team member and find out the reason of the delay. Manager is responsible for taking actions to resolve / help resolve the issue.

Manager actions to a great extent depend on the reason of the delay. Below you will find most common reasons and corresponding manager actions:

Author responded, but team member has not processed that response

  1. Instruct team member to action author’s response within 1 day
  2. Check that response has been actioned

Author did not respond and team member failed to send reminder in time

  1. Instruct team member to send a reminder to author within 1 day
  2. Check that team member has sent a reminder

Author did not respond after all reminders have been sent

  1. Put the paper on hold by putting capital letter “H” in column “D” (“Sub site note? * = papers with questions”) of the corresponding pii in the Production spreadsheet.
  2. If in doubt contact next level manager.

Author did not respond and team member has followed up author in accordance to procedure

  1. No action is necessary

All other cases

  1. Discuss the issue with next level manager.

Instructions for manager: non-responding authors

Those articles which have been put on-hold need to be monitored once a month (preferably last day of the month)

  1. Go to the “Non responding Authors Dashboard.
  2. Go through each pii and check whether there is an update from author in Production mailbox.
  3. If you find auhtor’s reply on team member’s enquiry, inform team member about that. Team member should resume reviewing the article from that point.
  4. Delete “hold” flag (capital letter “H” in column “D”) from Production spreadsheet.